What Cold Feels Like

When faced with the cold, we burrow back into ourselves. Shoulders round forward and hike up to shelter our exposed ears, chins drop to the chest and brows scrunch as if to protect the space between them. We become more solid and stoic than our formerly open summer selves, but nevertheless, there’s an eternal warmth way down deep inside of us that protrudes through our goose-bumpy skin and keeps on burning.

Instinctively, we wrap ourselves up in woolly layer upon woolly layer for a long period of winter insulation.

As do I, we groan and utter words of complaint about the harshness of winter cold, yet the comfort we find in the newly added, soft, all-encompassing layers can somehow bring a small smile to our faces.

What does the cold feel like? Is it a violent wind that howls through and cuts to the bone? Does it hit you hard with an unforgiving chill and refuse to leave? Or is it an invitation to go deeper into yourself? To find all of the light and the warmth that you could possibly need hid away beneath a downy coat?

And while it feels like an unwanted intruder at times, on other occasions we welcome the brisk and invigorating spirit it brings to our lives. The sight of a barren earth is somehow a strong symbol of the life that lives below, around, and deep within us.